A major focus of conservation is on protecting areas to ensure the persistence of biological diversity. Because such areas may be large, not easily accessible, subject to change, and sensitive to the surrounding landscape, remote sensing can be a valuable tool in establishing and managing protected areas. We describe three case studies to illustrate how remote sensing can contribute to setting priorities for conservation actions, monitoring the status of conservation targets, and evaluating the effectiveness of conservation strategies. In the Connecticut River watershed, remote sensing has been used to assess flood regimes and identify key areas of floodplain forests and their context for conservation planning. At Eglin Air Force Base in Florida, remote sensing has provided information to assess the effectiveness of management strategies to restore fire to the longleaf pine sandhills ecosystem, control invasive species, and prioritize annual prescribed burns. In eastern US forests, remote sensing is being used to evaluate the ecological condition and changes at properties where direct access would be difficult. As the resolution and capacities of remote-sensing technology continue to develop, however, several issues are becoming increasingly important. It is essential that the spatial and temporal resolution of remotesensing data be matched to the relevant scales of biodiversity, major threats, and management actions. Data layers must be compatible, both in scale and in measurement properties, and key patterns must be distinguished from irrelevant detail, especially at the finer scales of application in local management. Combining remote sensing with ground surveys can expand the array of information used in management and contribute to the ecological interpretation of remote-sensing data. Because conservation funds are always limited, remote sensing also must be cost effective. This requires balancing the wealth of detail afforded by ever-finer resolution of remote-sensing data with what is actually needed to implement sound conservation and management. Remote sensing is a valuable tool, but it is not a panacea for all of the challenges of conservation monitoring and management.Published by Elsevier Inc.

Resources for prescribed fire are frequently insufficient to manage public lands for all conservation and resource management objectives, necessitating prioritization of the application of fire across the landscape within any given year. Defining tradeoffs when applying prescribed fire to large landscapes is problematic not only because of the complexity of weighing competing management objectives at the landscape scale, but also because of the difficult nature of independently applying need-to-burn criteria to large areas. We present a case study of a simple modeling process implemented at Eglin Air Force Base in the Florida Panhandle (U.S.A.) to prioritize the application of prescribed fire. In a workshop setting, managers and biologists identified key conservation criteria and landscape management objectives that drive the application of prescribed fire. Remote sensing and other spatial data were developed to directly or indirectly represent all these criteria. Using geographic information system software, managers and biologists weighted each criterion according to its relative contribution to overall burn prioritization, and individual values for the criterion were scored according to how they influence the need to burn. Subsequently, this process has been validated and modified through ecological monitoring. This modeling process has also been applied to the 77,400-ha Blackwater River State Forest, public land adjacent to Eglin Air Force Base, demonstrating its applicability to lands with varying management priorities. The advantages of this model-based approach for prioritizing prescribed fire include the reliance on accessible, inexpensive software, the development of spatially explicit management objectives, the ease of transferability, and clearly stated assumptions about management that may be tested and reviewed through monitoring and public comment. Herramienta Simple de Modelado Espacial para Priorizar Actividades de Quemas Prescritas al Nivel de PaisajeResumen: Los recursos para las quemas prescritas frecuentemente son insuficientes para manejar tierras públicas para todos los objetivos de conservación y gestión de recursos, por lo que se requiere priorizar la aplicación de fuego en el paisaje en un año determinado. La definición de ventajas y desventajas de la aplicación de fuego prescrito a paisajes extensos es problemática no solo debido a la complejidad para valorar objetivos de manejo contrastantes al nivel de escala, sino también debido a la compleja naturaleza de la aplicación independiente de criterios de "necesidad de quema" enáreas extensas. Presentamos un estudio de caso de un proceso simple de modelado instrumentado en la Base Aérea Eglin en Florida (E.U.A.) para priorizar la aplicación de fuego prescrito. En un taller, administradores y biólogos identificaron criterios de conservación claves y objetivos de gestión de paisaje que rigen la aplicación de fuego prescrito. Se desarrolló la percepción remota y otros datos espaciales para representar todos estos criterios directa o indirect...

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